Chapter Eleven

QUINN

I sighed in frustration. The vision was disappearing again as soon I tried to tell my Recorder what I saw. Rob was playing the role of Recorder for me.

"I can't do it," I said, standing up and starting to pace.

"It's fine, Quinn. We've been steadily working for eight hours. It's time for a break."

"No, I want to figure it out. It's one of the most fundamental things I have to learn."

"It's basic, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Imagine rubbing your stomach and patting your head simultaneously. You have to split the activities in your mind and supervise them separately. Once you get it, you'll be able to do it forever. You just have to figure it out first. Can you tap your head and pat your stomach?" he said, demonstrating.

I blinked, looking at him like he was crazy. "I don't know."

"Did you ever play a musical instrument?" he asked, not phased by my facial expression at all. "It's the same thing, being able to read and play at once."

"No, I didn't." I put one hand on my stomach and one on my head. I started patting my head, but as soon as I tried to rub my belly, my hands got confused.

"This is stupid," I said. I scowled at Rob. "You make it look easy."

"It will be easy when you get it. All you need is practice. Once you understand, it will become second nature for you. Until then, it's hard."

"Hard? It feels impossible, Rob."

"Calm down. You've been working long hours for the past few months."

"Right. I've put in the hours and I still can't do a basic thing. I need to be able to do this if I'm going to work for the Precog Division, Rob. It's important to me."

"Quinn, you're not going to learn anything if your brain is starved and exhausted. Let's grab something to eat and I'll take you home."

I stared at him, feeling defeated. I wanted to practice more, but I knew the lesson time was over. "Okay."

Dressing for the cold was second nature by now. I pulled on my mitts and adjusted my scarf as Rob and I walked out into the darkening afternoon. The snow was falling. A strong wind blew into our faces. I winced. It was only the beginning of my second winter.

We headed down the street. Rob waited outside while I ducked into the restaurant. I wanted to grab something for dinner. When I came back out, Rob turned and headed for my apartment.

"When this training session is over, I'll be returning to the field."

"That will be more interesting for you, right?"

"No, I like working with trainees. Field work is sometimes annoying and challenging. It's even lonely, if you can imagine it."

He stared at me, looking deeply into my eyes. I was surprised. Was Rob interested in me as more than his student? The idea bothered me and made me feel guilty even though I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Why do you do it then?" I asked, trying to break the tension.

"I like variety in my life. This way I get to save people instead of just talking about it."

"Right." I nodded. Where was this conversation going?

"The reason I'm telling you is because when I go back out, I want you on my team."

"As part of your group?" I said, flabbergasted. I thought he might try to recruit me, but I hadn't expected an offer as soon as today. I had thought he might ask me. But I hadn't expected him to ask me so soon.

"Nothing's definite yet. I just wanted to let you know what I was thinking. If everything goes to plan, I can make you an official offer as soon as you get your certification. I'm putting my team together now."

"Thanks, Rob. I feel honored. But why would you want a newbie on your team?"

"I realize everything is new to you, but you have the potential to be one of the most powerful Precogs I've ever known. I only want to work with the best."

"Rob, I can't even report and keep my vision running at the same time," I said, feeling myself turn red under my scarf.

He stopped and turned my body to face him. "You'll get it. Don't worry, Quinn. I'm not lying about you being one of the best."

I rolled my eyes. "Better than you? Better than Airik?"

"I have never seen anyone learn as quickly as you do. You are intuitive and connected. You're unbelievable, Quinn, and don't let anyone tell you differently."

I had the sense that when he said anyone, he meant Airik. Not that Airik ever directly put me down, but he made me feel small when it came to anything about mental abilities. I suppose he thought he was better due to his training. Rob was making me feel special.

I could see on Rob's face that he was struggling with something. He took me by surprise when he kissed me on my face, where my third eye was. A vision flashed through my head, and I slowed the pictures down. I was able to follow my lessons!

Rob and I training more. Me getting the ability to report and have a vision at the same time. Rob hugging me. Rob and I in the field and him making advances. Me resisting over and over. And then one night…not resisting. Rob and I finally making love.

I pulled away and stepped back, feeling upset.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that," he said. "You're Airik's wife. I don't know what I was thinking."

"No, no. It's fine. It was platonic, right?" I said, unsure if that was true or not. I glanced up at our window and wondered if Airik had seen us together. I hoped he wasn't home yet.

"I don't know what that means. You were upset. I was trying to comfort you." It sounded as if he were attempting to convince himself as much as me.

"It shouldn't happen again, Rob," I said.

"No, it won't. It was unprofessional of me, Quinn. I won't let it happen again. I swear."

"Long life, Rob," I said and gave him a wave as I turned and went into our apartment building. I had a flash of how it felt when he made love to me, and I wondered what the vision meant.

Later that night, I was sitting on the couch and studying when Airik came in. "Hello," I said, not looking up at him.

"Hey," he said, his voice sounding exhausted.

I glanced up when I heard his voice. His eyes looked as though he hadn't slept well for some time. I felt badly for us, but he was the one who had pushed us apart. We barely spoke to each other now. We hadn't made love in ages. I was longing for him, but I wouldn't give in. If we could only make this work on a physical level, the sex had to come to a stop, too. I needed more than just good sex and a friendly roommate. Not that we were particularly friendly these days, either.

I sighed and went back to my studying. I expected him to go to the kitchen or the bedroom. Instead, he came and sat down beside me.

"What are you studying?" he said. His leg was so close to mine that our knees touched. I positioned myself so we weren't adjacent anymore. I didn't need to get distracted.

"History of the first Precogs. How the cold and their diet of fatty meat helped create the parts of the brain to develop these mental abilities."

"Ah." He nodded.

Unbidden, I remembered the vision of Rob and me making love. A shot of guilt went through me. He frowned immediately.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?" I said, looking away.

"You're feeling guilty."

I had forgotten he was an empath. I made it my next order of business to get better at shielding and learn how to keep my thoughts and feelings from Airik. The thought that I wanted to protect myself from him made me sad. But he had put us here. Not me.

"Why are you feeling guilty, Quinn? What have you done? Is it with Rob? Did you cheat on me?" His face turned red, and he looked angry. I thought I was going to cry. How had we ended up here? When we had got married, we both had high hopes for the future.

"I can't believe you would accuse me of something like that. I didn't do anything," I said, but the vision of Rob and me popped into my head again. I felt the guilt rising inside me, and I knew he did as well.

"When you say that, I feel your guilt increasing, but you're not lying."

"Rob kissed me today." Airik cursed under his breath. "On the forehead, Airik. It was entirely platonic. I was upset because I was having problems with the training."

"So he kissed you on the forehead? Seems like an unusual teaching approach."

"He was comforting me. I didn't ask him to. I'm not interested in Rob." But I might be sometime in the future, I thought to myself.

"There's the guilt again."

"When he kissed my third eye, I had a vision."

"What did you see?" He looked troubled.

"I saw Rob and I having sex," I blurted out, not meeting his eyes.

"When?" Airik ground out.

"Just a moment," I said, accessing the memory of the vision, dropping into it and looking for time markers. I popped out of my mind again with the information.

"What did you just do?" he said with a frown.

"I didn't get a timeframe on the vision, so I went back and found out when it was going to happen."

"You didn't get the timeframe when the vision was happening?"

"No, I was upset. I wasn't paying attention to everything. I'm still in training!" I said, feeling defensive.

"How did you get the timeframe now?"

"It's a different procedure I figured out, but it's pretty accurate. I remember the vision and drop into it."

"You drop into it? What does that even mean?"

"I play again as if it's happening for the first time."

He looked at me, utterly bewildered. "You can do that?"

"Can't everybody?"

He shook his head.

"It works for me. When it's playing again, I look for the time markers like they taught me at school."

He stared at me, arms crossed as if he couldn't figure me out.

"Is that wrong or something?" I said, unsure what he was upset about this time.

"It's not wrong, exactly. But I'm not the only one who can't replay their visions. I've never heard of anybody being able to do that. Why do you think we have Recorders?"

"Well, um, I don't know what that means," I said, changing the subject back to Rob. "But I have the timeframe, and it's about a month and a half from now." A couple of weeks after our possible divorce date, which was looking more and more likely considering the way our relationship was going.

"You're going to sleep with him."

I frowned. "No. I have no desire to have sex with Rob."

"Not now," he said, accusing.

"Not ever. I don't care about Rob."

"That's not how it looks. You had a vision, Quinn," he said, standing up and glaring at me.

I felt frustrated and angry. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, and then I stood up and raised my voice.

"You told me that visions can be changed," I said, stepping closer to him. "If the vision comes to pass, Airik, why do you think that would happen?" I felt tears rush to my eyes and I struggled to control my emotions.

He gave me a piercing look. I saw hurt, anger, and jealousy in his eyes.

"I'll give you a hint," I said. "If it ever happened, it would be because I was so unhappy with you that I had no other choice to get my needs met."

All the color drained out of his face. He sat down quickly as if his legs wouldn't hold him.

"I don't want it to be like this between us," I said. I sat down beside him, my voice sounding anguished to my ears. "But you're pushing me away. I can't fix it. Only you can."

He scrubbed a hand across his face.

"But how?" he said, his voice sounding as desperate as I felt. "How can I fix it, Quinn? I want to."

I thought for a moment. "What happened to you in high school when your heart got broken, Airik? We have to find the memory so that you can face it and release it. Maybe you will be free from your trauma then."

"It wasn't a trauma," Airik whispered.

"Anything that hurts you enough to scar your psyche and prevent you from being happy is traumatic. I'd say this qualifies."

I studied him. "You'd have to let me do a memory pull on you. Honestly, I don't think you trust me enough to do that, Airik." He looked at me but didn't deny what I'd just said. "If you let me do that, it would show me that you cared about us and about fixing what's wrong between us."

"I can't imagine letting you do a memory pull on me," he said. He looked like I had suggested he get a frontal lobotomy.

"I've done over ten already," I said.

"Ten? At school? Why would Rob have you do memory pulls already?"

"It wasn't at school," I said. "Not officially. Word got around that I'm kind of good at them. People started asking me for help."

"Are you serious?"

"Airik, I know you're my husband. You care about me in your own way. I'm sorry, but you have no idea what's going on with me. You don't know how I'm doing in school because you never ask me. You don't know what troubles or worries me. I assume you don't care, or you're busy with your own work. You don't even know little things, like I fell on the ice today and hit my head. You're not interested in my life."

"You fell on the ice? Did you have it checked?"

I laughed.

"You're missing the point. You would never have known it if I hadn't deliberately mentioned it. You don't ask me about myself. You want to have sex with me, and you say you want to get past this problem in our relationship, but I have to ask you a simple question. Why?"

He stared at me helplessly.

"If you don't think I'm an interesting person, what's the point? You can get sex from any woman. You're a celebrity on this planet and incredibly good-looking. You don't need me, Airik. We can finish out our time and get divorced."

"Quinn…"

"Airik," I gazed at him sadly. "I think we both hoped this might turn into something more, but it's not working out. I think we should let it go."

"Quinn, please."

I shook my head. I had nothing more to say.

When Airik and I were shopping for groceries in silence the next day, I got a bad feeling. There was a dull sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, and I looked around, wondering what the threat was. Airik glanced at me. I knew he had picked up on my emotions. He looked alert and was searching for the danger as well.

But nothing happened.

We finished getting the groceries, paid and took the food out of the store to a car waiting for us outside. Everything felt peaceful until, without warning, a man ran up to us and grabbed me. He threw me into a different vehicle and jumped in after me.

Airik had been on the other side of our car, loading it with groceries. We were gone before he could get around to the sidewalk.

In our car, my abductor moved as far away from me as he could get, all the way to the other side. He was scared of me.

"Do you think you're going to get away with this?" I said. "My husband's coming after us right now."

I hoped he was.

"It will only be a few minutes. We'll near a place I can burn you safely," he said, and I stared at him. How did a person get so fucked up?

"Why don't you shoot me instead?" I said. In retrospect, this wasn't the most profound question I could have asked at the time, but I had wondered about the tactics of Sons of the Heavenly Father.

"Witches must be burned. Our scriptures say so. Killing you is my first assignment. To go back to Earth, I must have proof of your death. Without proof, my life will be forfeit."

I wasn't genuinely frightened until he spoke. I started to get scared then because the man seemed completely unhinged. I was alone in a car with a maniac, and I didn't know where I was going.

Before I knew it, the car stopped, and we were getting out in a field near an abandoned building. Whoever this person was, he came prepared. There was a platform set up with wood around the bottom, all ready for me. The only thing missing was an audience of people screaming "BURN HER!" I started to shake then. Terror gripped my soul.

He was going to kill me. Not with a bullet to the head, either. He was going to burn me alive. He yanked me out of the car and over to his construction, tying me securely despite my struggles. I tried to summon my internal fire. I didn't know how it happened before, and I couldn't do it now.

I twisted and pulled at the ropes holding me to the stake, but my captor was good with knots. I tried to breathe slowly. I felt myself hyperventilating. Soon I saw spots in front of my eyes. I felt myself going unconscious.

I was glad there wasn't a crowd of people to see me. This wasn't what a strong woman in charge of her destiny would do at all — faint.

But at least I would be unconscious when I burned to death. That was good, wasn't it? I didn't think that I would get to find out. Before I could wake up, I would be dead.

AIRIK

When I saw the car speeding away with Quinn in it, my reaction wasn't to race after her. I sat down in the car and calmed my fear and anger. My emotions wouldn't save Quinn. I had to rescue her, no matter how angry she was with me. It was my job to keep her safe.

I closed my eyes and did exercises that took me into a deeper state of consciousness until I felt completely relaxed. Then I called a vision. I focused on Quinn and opened myself.

There.

She was tied to a stake as flames licked at her legs. I fought against the panic that lurked on the edges of my mind. My years of training was the only thing preventing me from losing control. Carefully, I committed the place and time of the vision to memory. Then I let it go and came back to reality.

It only took me a moment to find the coordinates of the empty factory I had seen in the Precog. I programmed them into the car, and took off at the highest possible speed.

I was acting recklessly. Being careful and cautious was my usual style. But I didn't have much time. The faster I got to Quinn, the sooner I could intervene on her behalf. She would die in less than twenty minutes. I had no time to waste.

When I got to her, the assassin was kneeling beside Quinn. He was preparing to light a fire around her. I wondered why he didn't use a more efficient method of dispatching people, but I was thankful for it now because it meant I still had time to save her.

I ran up to her captor. He was so intent on what he was doing that he didn't hear me or look up. I kicked him in the stomach and grabbed his head, slamming it hard into my knee. He groaned. I pushed him aside, pulling out a knife and cutting the ropes that tied Quinn to the stake. She moved away from the fire that had started to burn her pants. I took her hand.

"No!" The sound of the man's howl made us both look at him. He had recovered quickly and was running at us with a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. I felt Quinn tense up beside me. I wanted to run, but she stood firm and lifted her hand.

He screeched to a halt so comically that I would have laughed if the situation hadn't been dangerous. I looked over at her and watched as heat waves moved through the air from her hand towards the man, melting both the gun and the knife.

I couldn't believe it. I had never seen a Precog do that before. But already I was beginning to suspect that Quinn was something more than an ordinary Precog.

"No, please don't," he said, turning and running towards a pile of trash. Quinn followed him, wielding her hot hand. The next thing I saw in my mind was a vision of an explosion.

"Quinn, stop!" I shouted. As I said the words, I knew I was too late.

The man ran and hid behind the rubbish. Quinn's fist followed him and hit a barrel full of gas fumes. She heated them up and created an explosion, releasing all the energy from the barrel. Her hand was hot enough to ignite something. We were blown back from the shock wave. Quinn was unharmed, of course, but my head was bleeding.

It took us a minute for us to recover. When we did, Quinn looked at me — aghast. "What have I done?" she said.

"You didn't do anything. It was an accident," I said. I went to investigate the body, but there was almost nothing left. I came back to her and pulled her away to the car.

"It's over, Quinn," I said. "He's gone. No one is looking for you anymore. You can relax."

She nodded at me, still in shock. "Yes, he's certainly gone."

Both of us wondered how Quinn had changed her future.